


Complications in Romantic Subplots

by Ilthit



Series: Trope-Bingo: Round Two [4]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Trope Bingo Round 2, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, never meant to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 21:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because you love someone doesn't mean you were meant to be.</p><p>Warning: Nobody ends up with anyone. This is all about relationships that didn't start (and one that ended).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complications in Romantic Subplots

**Author's Note:**

> For Trope-Bingo and the trope "poor communication".

Troy faced the men's room mirror and peeled off the Kickpuncher facial prosthetic, imagining tiny nanobots unwiring sensors from his nerve-endings and repairing his bone structure as the duct tape pulled off his skin. His stomach felt knotted. and not in a good way, or even the bad way that just meant he'd have to spend the rest of the day in the bathroom. It was as if a kitten had been playing with a yardball of terror in his bowels.

"I'm sorry," Abed said. He'd changed back into his jeans and taken off the wig and false eyelashes, but his lips were still smudged red with lipstick and he was wearing the pink sweater. "We probably should have practiced that scene first."

"I didn't know you were actually going to make out with me!" Troy stuffed the prosthetic into their duffel bag of props.

"We did agree it was going to be an exact replication of the film as far as we could make it with limited resources. But I know sex always gets higher MPAA ratings than violence, so we should have discussed it more explicitly."

"It's cool." It was too good an apology to resist, and Troy found himself mollified. "I was just a little surprised, that's all."

"Well, it's in the can now, anyway."

"Yeah." Troy was pretty sure he should not say this but it spilled out on its own anyway. "Do you know that you're an amazing kisser?"

Abed's lips curved in a slight smile. "Yeah."

"Like, whoa. It was like... having your entire body replaced with birthday cake stuck all over with sparklers."

"You should see my Han Solo."

Troy's eyebrows shot to his hairline. There were about a million reasons he shouldn't ask, but there was only one reason he should and that was that he'd get to make out with Han Solo. A sound tickled at the back of his throat, trying to get out.

Abed gave him a curious look, and the sound – which turned out to be a kind of a choked whine – won, accompanied with a few hops and skips from side to side and hands flapping at the air. Troy was the worst under pressure.

"You're trembling," said Abed.

"I'm not trembling," Troy squeaked.

Abed took a step closer. "You like me because I'm a scoundrel. There aren't enough scoundrels in your life."

He was close enough for Troy to smell the breath mints and hear the low purr of the Falcon's engines. "I happen to like nice--"

"Okay, stop," said Jeff, coming out of a stall just as the toilet flushed behind him. "I'm embarrassed for you two. You can't even flirt like normal people."

The spaceship disappeared. "Hey! You're not supposed to hide in there!"

"Pipe down, Princess," Jeff said as he finished washing his hands and started cleaning his cuticles. "I wasn't hiding. Some people do use the bathroom for something other than socializing. What are we, Shirley?"

"It not gay if it's Han and Leia," Troy muttered.

He caught Abed's eye through the mirror. For a moment he was Abed the Camera, recording, noticing, slotting into memory. Then he smiled, and Troy didn't know Abed well enough yet to tell which kind of smile it was, but if he was smiling it meant everything was cool. Right?

Right.

-

"Annie, there's something I've been meaning to ask you." Abed was pouring himself a mug of cold hot chocolate at the island. He'd taken to wearing a checkered dressing gown over his pyjamas in the morning in what Annie figured was a half-hearted effort to look more grown-up, or possibly so he could play covert Inspector Spacetime.

"Sure, Abed. Fire away." She'd had her coffee – black – and would be heading out for her run. Troy was still rapping in the shower.

"I noticed things with Jeff haven't progressed, and you've been reading a lot of paperback novels. Would you like to have sex sometimes?

Annie squeaked. "Abed!"

"I realize I'm not your type romantically. You like leading men, the hero types. I have a more indie flavour. That's why I'm not asking you on a date, but I understand friends with benefits is getting to be a mainstream option." He stirred the chocolate around in his cup. "I'm good at oral."

Annie was still picking her jaw off the floor, but he looked just like he always did, kind of intense and detached at the same time. It was that what got to Annie. The pleasant tingle that had started at her fingertips died down. "Well, thanks, but I don't need any _favors_."

"Cool," said Abed, turning away. "Cool cool cool."

–

"If Abed asked you to have sex with you, would you?"

"..."

"It's okay, Troy. I would too. I guess we'll just have to comfort each other."

"I told you not to therapize me in bed, Britta!"

"Shh."

–

Troy cried on and off for about two weeks whenever it hit him that he and Britta were really over. It was a different thing to want out of a relationship than to actually be out of it. Annie hugged him and made sympathetic sounds, but he knew she didn't understand. Abed confined himself to the occasional pat on the back.

"It's not that I think breaking up wasn't the right thing to do," he confessed one late night after Annie had gone to bed and they were watching Vertigo with the sound turned down. "I just hate that it was."

Abed squeezed his hand on the cracked leather of the three-seater Annie had finally made them get and handed him another tissue. Eventually his throat stopped constricting and he could better see the bulging eyes of Jimmy Stewart glowing in the darkness.

"I know how that feels," Abed said in a tone of surprise. He pointed at nothing. "Empathy. I got this."

"What?" said Troy, because it had been at least ten minutes since the last time he'd spoken and sometimes Abed got caught up listening to the inner narrator.

"Letting go of people when it's the right thing," said Abed, fingering the remote. "She's better off this way, and maybe you are too, but then you're still sad because she's not with you."

Troy didn't get it until after Abed had gone to bed and Troy was brushing his teeth, and then he had to stay in the bathroom for another twenty minutes crying as quietly as he could. It was that kind of a night.

-

It's those three little words, or a kiss that means something, and that's supposed to decide who you're allowed spend your life with. It's sometimes easier not to.


End file.
